


and with all your magic, I disappear from view

by buckybunnyteeth



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Casual Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Pre-Canon, trans!Dante
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 11:22:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15338802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckybunnyteeth/pseuds/buckybunnyteeth
Summary: He looks new, and exciting and mysterious and maybe a little bit bad news. Just Dante’s type.





	and with all your magic, I disappear from view

**Author's Note:**

> this story has a trans character having penetrative sex with a cis man if that is something that will upset you I totally understand if you have to nope out of your fic.
> 
> I am not trans so if I have written something insensitive or unintentionally transphobic please do not feel bad about telling me.
> 
> in this fic Dante is dealing with feelings of guilt and self-hatred over the death of his big brother, none of these feelings are to do with him being trans.

"P.S. That night in the emergency room, do you recall if I threw up something I needed? Some small but trivial thing that belonged inside? I distinctly feel as though I’m missing something.

But then, I always have."

\- Suzanne Vale in Postcards from the Edge by Carrie Fisher

 

Dante slips out of the house before dawn, wearing his best clothes and his sister's old jacket.

He creeps out of his room and passes by Cisco’s. He hears no tinkering, so he must be asleep for once, and when he passes the girls room where the flickers of a night light are creeping out across the carpet. His mother is in her room, passed out on the bed, too tired after work to even close the door. From the snoring coming from downstairs his father is sleeping on the couch.

He knows where to step on the stairs, so they don’t creak, how to open the back door so it’s hinges don’t scream. The cold night air bites at him and he wraps his jacket closer around him. The pocket rumples against his side and he remembers the pack of smokes in there that he swiped from his dad yesterday. The shame he should feel doesn’t come.

Its simple enough to jump the back fence. He lands in a patch of snow and rolls his eyes when it splashes all over his new sneakers.

 _You have new ones_ , his brain hisses, _but Cisco has hand-me-downs._

“Fuck!’ he scuffs his shoes against the dirt and starts walking away, “Ah fuck.”

This is exactly why he needed to get out in the first place.

The cold tries to invade him as he makes his way away from his neighborhood, skirting down back streets and over fences. People pass, but they take one look at his ridged shoulders and leave him be. Or else the recognize him, take one look at his face and look down and away.

 _That’s Dante_ , he thinks bitterly, _Dante with the dead sibling, and the dead career path and the deadhead_.

He’s twenty now. Has been for a week. Older than Mando was when-

He’s twenty and there is no way he is getting into college. There was no way he was when he was eighteen, and his prospects haven’t improved. He doesn’t even really want to.

Its strange isn’t it? To feel suffocated by where you are, by the place you grew up in, but the thought of leaving makes you panic so much it feels like your heart is going to beat so hard it breaks every bone in your body. The want to leave and the need to stay, to keep everything the same, to stay safe, twists around inside him until he can’t tell what he wants.

He wants to _forget_.

Cisco is seventeen now and more a man than he is. Seventeen and already bailing Dante out for his stupid mistakes. Seventeen and he is so stupid-smart he’s already at College, already taking classes so complicated they fly right over Dante’s head when he catches sight of Cisco’s textbooks on the kitchen table. He’s thriving, getting scholarships from Harrison Wells and Kord fucking Industries, spending time with other smart people who know what the hell he is talking about. Just like Armando always wanted for him.

_For you both. He wanted that for you both._

Dante shakes off the memory and ducks into the closest doorway.

The warm air of the bar hits him, and he instantly relaxes. It’s a bit of a dive, a man’s stereotypical pub full of whiskey and beer and none of the alcohol that actually tastes any good. But Dante can work with that.

He sidles up to the bar and lounges on a stool, sending the bartender his best grin. The bartender eyes him and holds out his hand. Dante, not missing a beat, slaps his id into the guy's hand.

Bartender scowls at it, scowls at Dante, but eventually relents. He tosses the card at him and slaps a foul-smelling beer down in front of him.

“Thanks.”

“Shut it.”

The bartender stalks away and Dante pockets his id. It is barely even fake. Eight months isn’t even that much of a lie. If this was Australia he’d have been able to drink for years by now. Or do they start at sixteen? Or is that Scotland?

The beer isn’t what matters anyway. That’s not what he wants.

He scans the room. It's crowded, even for a Friday night. There is a group of people making a lot of noise over by the pool tables, probably a bachelor party. There are other groups, some watching the game, others telling tall stories or commiserating. There is a group of women across the bar trying, and failing to sing karaoke, and sitting just up the bar is a blonde businessman in his shirt sleeves, trying to convince the grumpy bartender to switch off the game and- “Put on some bloody proper football, for _chrissakes_.”

Dante’s eyes linger on a few guys. Broad shoulders and stubble around grinning mouths. No one has seen him yet and that’s how he wants it. Bars like this aren’t strangers to him, and he’s learned that jumping into the fray, flirting with big tall guys, isn’t always the smart thing to do.

He takes a sip of beer and almost spits it out.

“Urgh,” he swallows it down with a wince, “What is this- yeasty water?”

A low chuckle comes from behind him and Dante tenses.

“Lightweight alert,” the man the voice belongs to drops down into the seat beside Dante, smug grin on his face.

He’s about forty, greying at the temples and through his beard. He’s muscled in that beefy way that Dante actually likes … on other people, not this guy. Dante recognizes him in that dim distant way that means he knows him from the church. From before he stopped going to church.

His eyes flick down and he thinks he sees a strip of lighter flesh where the guys wedding band should be.

Anger, at being interrupted, at being cornered, and cornered by a guy who probably doesn’t even know that he knows him, a church-going man, lodges in his throat like the start of a curse.

Instead of showing his cards, Dante just raises an eyebrow at the guy.

“Did you need something, man?”

“Company would be nice. You looked in need of some too, all alone over here.”

Dante rolls his eyes and takes another swig, purposefully not wincing this time. It really is disgusting.

“I’m really not interested.”

“You don’t even know me, I might be the love of your life.”

Dante smiles, and he can feel that it’s his cruel smile.

 _‘The smile that comes before the bite’_ Mando used to say.

“Love of my life?” he chuckles, “Does your wife know you get so sappy with boys in bars, _amigo_?”

The man's smile doesn’t slip but his eyes go hard. His hand clenches into a fist where he has it on the bar, and the zing of fear and anticipation courses through Dante, because if he can’t get a fuck out of tonight a fight will do just fine.

The man moves, but before he can do anything there is a flash of light, like sun reflecting off of something metallic, Dante winces, and the man is slumped against the bar. Snoring.

“What?” Dante breathes heart racing in his chest at the sudden lack of a fight.

Down the bar, the businessman chuckles, whiskey half raised to his lips.

“Poor bastard,” he says with a smirk, “Some blokes just can’t hold their liquor.”

Dante frowns at him.

“I … didn’t see him drinking.”

The man chuckles again, swigging his drink before turning to look at Dante, his dark brown eyes sparkling with knowing humor.

“Must be a real lightweight.”

Dante just stares.

On the tv, a player fumbles a pass and the group of guys groan and shout in outtrade. Blonde British businessman just rolls his eyes.

Dante can’t tear his eyes off him.

He’s young, maybe only a couple of years older than Dante, but something about him is world-weary, making him seem older. Dressed in slacks, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a limp read tie around his neck, he looks ruffled and unkempt. There is a battered old watch around his left wrist, darkish stubble across his face in contrast to his brassy blonde hair.

A businessman had been Dante’s first guess. But from the way he sits, the way he moves … Dante’s not so sure.

Businessmen in bars come in two forms, cocksure lawyer and ceo types that letch and smirk and ultimately have nothing special going on behind their faces. And then there are world beaten drunks who slump into their drinks and leave when they are kicked out.

This guy is neither of those things.

Dante can’t read him.

He looks new, and exciting and mysterious and maybe a little bit bad news. Just Dante’s type.

An exhilarating feeling zings up his spine, and he moves around the collapsed perv to sit beside the blonde man, carrying his beer with him as an afterthought.

“You new in town?”

The man flicks his eyes over Dante and shrugs, smooth, not dismissive.

“Passing through on my way home,” he says nonchalantly, “You?”

“Stuck here.”

The man chuckles again, but this time it sounds warm.

“An honest man.”

“Only when I have to be.”

The man looks at him for a long moment before extending his hand to him. For the first time Dante notices the dark tattoos winding around the man's arms. One of the tendrils, that is written in an alphabet Dante doesn’t recognize, is a different color, like it’s been freshly inked.

“John.”

Dante takes his hand with a smile.

“Dante.”

He makes sure that their handhold lingers. When John sits back Dante sees a flash of more tattoos under his loose shirt collar.

Dante really, really wants to see under that shirt.

“So where is home for you?”

“You can’t hear my accent, mate?”

Dante laughs, an honest laugh not one for the sake of flirting. It feels a little strange.

“No, I hear it. I’m just not the kind of ignorant American that assumes every English person I meet is from London.”

John inclines his head, amused.

“Liverpool.”

“No point asking you who you go for in Soccer then.”

“Football. The whole bloody rest of the world calls it football,” John swigs his drink, “But yeah, you’d be guessing right.”

“We call it football in my family. Abuela won’t hear of any that ‘ _American nonsense’_ ”

John snorts.

“That’s a good name for the messed-up gridiron they play, I’m going to borrow that one.”

Dante takes another swig of beer to hide his pleased smile. Smiling, laughing, joking. He’s pretty sure this is going the way he wants it to be.

“Didn’t think anyone would pass through central City on their way to England.”

“I had some business here.”

“No offense, John, but you don’t seem much like a businessman to me.”

John looks at him again. Really looks at him.

Dante fights the urge to squirm under the scrutiny. His sneakers (snow soaked), his jeans (ripped), his shirt (unironed), and his jacket (old), Dante regrets wearing it all until Johns' eyes trail down over him and he sees the spark, that age-old spark of warmth that he was waiting for.

John meets his eyes again and Dante smiles. Behind them, the sleeping man slumps off the bar and falls to the floor with a splat, but neither of them notices.

“I think I need a smoke,” John announces.

“Are you against some company?”

“Not at all, love.”

Dante shivers and follows John when he stands and heads for the door.

The cold hits him right in the chest, seeps through his skin into his lungs, and he savors the feeling.

John leans back against the wall of the bar, frowning as he pats himself down. Dante reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out the packet he stole from his dad. John looks at him, surprised, and then smiles.

“You’re a bit of alright, you know that?” he chuckles as he takes a smoke from the packet.

“If that’s Liverpudlian for ‘thanks man’, then you’re welcome.”

John smirks around his cigarette. Dante stands in front of him, not dropping eye contact as he lights it.

The moment hangs between them, charged and electric.

Smoke rises between them, curling up into the deep dark night sky and Dante decides that yeah, he’s getting what he wants tonight.

He steps up to John, inhaling the smoke between them and relishing the way it burns in his lungs. Johns' eyes go liquid and Dante leans forwards to speak into his ear, just close enough that his lips trail against it.

“I know a place not far from here,” he says, letting his voice trail low, “if you don’t have a boyfriend waiting on you.”

He leans back, biting his lip, and shivers when John smirks around his cigarette.

“No ones waiting on me,” he says, voice as smooth and burning as whiskey.

Dante smirks and grabs his hand.

“Come on.”

He doesn’t tell John that the place he knows is a back alley that the police don’t patrol behind the old Central City gym, just down the street from the bar. But it John minds he doesn’t let it show.

John presses him against the brick wall, mouth landing hot and hard on him while he pressed their bodies together. A whine escapes his throat unintentionally and he kisses back just as hard, hand twisting in that bright blonde hair he had been admiring earlier.

John knows how to kiss. Like toe-curling, fall to your knees and forget your name kiss. He bites Dante’s lip to the point of pleasure-pain, just as he hitches one of Dante’s legs up on his hip and grinds his hips forwards into him.

“Ah!” Dante breaks away to moan, “Oh god, yeah.”

John kisses up his throat, continuing the hard-slow rolls of his hips that make Dante shiver. He feels like he’s sweltering in his coat, so he slips it off and tosses it away, uncaring where it lands. Then he yanks Johns head up, making him moan.

“ _Jaysus_ ,” he chuckles, looking just as far gone as Dante feels, his face flushed and his eyes burning with want, “As much as I am enjoying this, love, I didn’t bring any lube with me.”

“No problem,” Dante pants, biting at Johns' lip.

He grabs one of the hands that was wandering up his shirt and slips it down the front of his pants, into his underwear. Johns eyes practically cross when his fingers sink into the hot, wet heat of him. His head drops forwards as he moans.

“You’re trying to kill me, love.”

Dante thrusts against his fingers and keens when they press against his clit just right.

“Ah!” he shouts, feeling his legs shake when John starts to move his fingers against him in a delicious rhythm, “Oh Christ, yeah just like- ah!”

John pulls him into another sweet hot kiss as that delicious pleasure builds up inside him. His toes curl in his shoes and he clutches John closer as he moans. He teeters on the edge of finishing and he has to break away, panting as he pulls himself back.

“Get inside me,” he pants, pulling Johns head back by the hair so he can look him in the eye, “now.”

John shivers and Dante can feel his cock jump from where it is pressed against his thigh.

“Sweet Christ- are you okay with that?” he smooths Dante’s hair out of his eyes, eyes not losing their heat but suddenly concerned, “Won’t hurt ya, will it love?”

Dante might not know this man from Adam, but he knows that John isn’t just talking about physical pain here. He nods at him, smiling.

“I’ll be okay. Hell, if your cocks as nice as your fingers I’ll be more than okay,” he chuckles, reaching down to undo Johns belt, “I’ll be perfect.”

John nods and then helps him shove down both of their pants, his jeans and Johns slacks, followed by their underwear. If they were anywhere else Dante would let John undress him properly, would undress the other man completely instead of just unbuttoning his shirt to get a look at his heavily tattooed chest.

“Yum,” he moans, trailing his hand up Johns treasure trail where a series of runes have been inked.

John slips his hand down and back inside Dante, wicked smile on his face.

“Yeah,” he chuckles, “Ditto.”

Dante snorts a laugh and draws the other man into a kiss.

Date pulled a condom out of his pocket before his jeans fell and once they are stripped of their bottom layers he tears it open and rolls it onto John, enjoying the way it makes his eyes cross.

Then John hooks Dante’s leg around his hip to press their pelvises together, connects their lips into another world ending kiss, and pushes his cock slowly inside of him. Dante breaks the kiss and feels his eyes roll back at the delicious stretch, the too slow torture of the friction. It’s perfect.

“Oh god,” he pants as John pushes all the way inside, “Good thing I’m so- _Christ_ , so _freaking wet_ , you’re huge, man!”

John laughs, then they both moan when that causes some magical feelings through their connected bodies.  John hooks Dante’s other leg up around his hip and presses him harder against the wall.

“You’re good for my ego.”

Dante grins a wicked grin back at him.

“I’ll show you what else I can be good- oh!”

John starts to roll his hips, deep and slow up into him, pressing on all those magical places inside him that make his whole body feel like electricity.

“Hnng,” Dante moans, hands pulling at Johns' hair, “ _Oh sweet_ \- this is great, man, but- Ah! I really need you to fuck me- properly. Hard.”

John moans and his hands dig into the meat of Dante’s thighs as he picks up the pace. Their bodies slap together and its hot and loud and beautifully depraved, guttural moans punching out from both of them when they can manage to break their mouths away from each other.

Dante thrusts back against John, squeezing his inner walls around John’s cock and delighting in the way it makes his eyes roll back or his hips stutter. He pulls johns hair and smirks at the way it makes his whole-body shiver.

Dante is close to coming but its just out of reach, and he can tell from the way Johns' hips are beginning to lose their rhythm that he is too. He is about to pull one of his hands away from Johns' hair to rub himself to completion-

When John presses him harder against the brick wall, pries one of his hands off Dante’s thighs and slips his beautiful, wonderful, magical fingers down to circle around Dante’s clit.

“Fuck!” Dante throws his head back in pleasure, “Fuck, _Jesus_ I’m-!”

The electricity that had been surging through his body breaks, and he yanks at Johns' hair as he comes with a shout.

It's just what he needed. The warmth and chemicals rush through him, making him feel weightless and beautiful and so fucking good.

He starts to come down, feeling light-headed and infinite. John is still going, his pace slowed somewhat as Dante clenched hard around him. Dante thrusts his hips forwards, biting his lips at the delightful feeling of overstimulation.

“Come on, big guy,” he breathes as he bites at Johns' lips, “Come for me, Johnny.”

John moans and laughs at the same time and after a few hard thrusts, a good hair pulling and Dante slipping a hand down between his ass cheeks, John comes, groaning into the side of Dante’s throat.

They stand there panting for a moment. Then John guides Dante’s legs down and kisses him sweetly as he regains the feeling in them. Then they help each other dress and start ambling in the direction of the bar.

A euphoric high exists between them as they walk back up the cold snowy street, their arms slung around each other companionably.

They get back to the bar and John pulls him in for one last lingering kiss.

“If you’re ever in town again-” Dante pulls a pen out of his Jacket pocket and scrawls his number onto the back of Johns' hand, “-give me a call. I’d be happy to use you for sex again.”

John laughs, the loud happy sound bouncing around in the empty near morning street.

“I’d be happy to be used again.”

And with one last kiss, a smile and a given cigarette, John disappears back into the bar and Dante starts walking back home.

His mind is blissfully empty and silent. The sun starts to rise around him and he isn’t even reticent about the coming day, or the same old anxieties that it will bring.

He’s in such a good mood that he doesn’t realize which way he is walking until it’s too late.

He freezes in place when he sees the mural.

The bottom drops out of his stomach.

 

_In honor of Armando Ramon._

_May your light shine on forever_.

 

The gold letters on the glass glint brightly in the new morning light.

Dante feels like he’s going to be sick.

He stares at the words, feeling a thousand things at once until the words bubble up out of him unbidden.

“I hate you,” he hisses at the ghost, the memory, of his lost brother, “I hate you _so_ much.”

It's not true but it is at the same time.

Because his brother died and left him here like this.

Imagine it. Your brother dies and suddenly you are the oldest.

You’re not the follower, second fiddle, footsteps always just behind someone else’s.

There is no one in front of you, no one who you know so well you don’t have to look where you are going because you can see the heels of their shoes as you daydream and you know they would never lead you wrong.

No one and nothing is in front of you.

Suddenly you’re leading the group up the path.

You stumble in the snow, in the tail, and they crash into your back, just as scared as you but you’re the one not allowed to show it.

You don’t realize the path is dark until you are the leader.

You didn’t know there were so many wrong turns.

How could they do this to you?

You’re second, middle, free, not this. How could they leave and make you this?

Tears drip from his eyes as he falls to the pavement in front of the mural.

“How could you leave me here!” he shouts, “How could you die and leave me here alone. I’m- I’m not meant to be this-this person I’ve become. I don’t want it! I don’t want to be this way!”

The mural stays silent.

He feels so lost, so alone. Just like he has every day since Armando disappeared.

“I hate you,” he whispers into the cold morning air, “Please come back. Please, hermano. I can’t live like this.”

He slumps over, leaning on the brick beside the mural, and closes his eyes.

He wonders, really, truly, what would happen if he just stayed here forever.

There is the scuffing sound of a sneaker and a throat clears above him.

Dante cracks open his eyes to see that Cisco is standing over him. He’s dressed in his usual dorky t-shirt and jeans … but today he is also wearing Mando’s old varsity jacket. Dante fingers the soft lining of the jacket he’s wearing, the jacket that was his. Maybe he’s been needing Mando close recently as well.

“Cisco,” he breathes, clearing his throat against the soreness his tears caused, “what are you doing here, hermano.”

Cisco rolls his eyes behind the frames of his thick glasses.

“Well,” he says, a sarcastic smile on his face, “You see, I have this brother, right? And sometimes he needs someone to come to stop him from being stupid.”

Dante feels a weak smile spread on his face.

“I’m sorry.”

Cisco rolls his eyes before he bends down and pulls him to his feet, slinging his arm across Dante’s back to steady him.

“Shut up,” he says, then he looks at the mural, eyes going soft, “I miss him too.”

Dante leans his head down to press against the top of Cisco’s, not ready to be dragged home yet.

“I’m sorry I’m such a bad big brother.”

Cisco squeezes him closer.

“You’re not a bad brother,” he tells him, quiet honesty in his voice.

“I could be better.”

Cisco sighs.

“So be better. And I will too,” he starts walking, pulling Dante along with him in the direction of home, “For Armando.”

Dante closes his eyes, letting the sun seep into his skin and his brother guide him home.

His mission to forget hadn’t worked. But, he thinks distantly, maybe he got what he needed after all.

**Author's Note:**

> this is such a random pairing but it's not my fault, fern mentioned that Dante would totally be attracted to John like a thousand years ago in a conversation we were having so its ferns fault not mine!
> 
> the characters in this fic are based on the tv versions, but Dante is sort of a mix of tv dante and dante from the vibe comics so ???
> 
> and oh my god explicit sex??? haven't written that in a while, its probably really badly written, but I tried.
> 
> hope you enjoy it @bette who will probably be the only person to read this


End file.
